Politicians spar over education reform at the Capitol | Sacramento News - KCRA Home

Politicians spar over education reform at the Capitol | Sacramento News - KCRA Home:
Politicians spar over education reform at the Capitol

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) —Fixing California's broken education system was the hot topic of debate Tuesday at the state Capitol, where Democrats and Republicans are still battling over reform, and parents and students caught in the middle of the fight.
Evelyn Macias wasn't invited to today's hearing, but she came anyway to speak up for parents.
"The parent voice is missing," she said. "The student voice is missing."
Macias' daughter Julia,  who is a sophomore, is one of nine studentssuing the state of California, claiming she was getting ineffective teachers.
A Superior Court judge agreed and ruled that California's teacher tenure system was unconstitutional, although the state has appealed.
"We think it's unfair that teachers who are wonderful are oftentimes let go because they're the last ones in the system," Macias said. "And we also think it's unfair that teachers stay in the system because of seniority instead of quality."
At the hearing, Republican Assemblymember Catherine Baker of Dublin said, "That's something we need to change in California state law."
Republicans in the Assembly are pushing for reform measures requiring teachers to work three years instead of two before they can gain permanent status and evaluations on whether or not students are actually learning.
Unfortunately, those bills have never been voted on, according to Assembly Republican leader Kristin Olsen of Modesto.
"Every day that we delay passing the reforms that are so necessary, even according to the court, is another day that we are failing the children of California," Olsen said.
Yet Democrats, including Assemblymember Patrick O'Donnell of Long Beach, who is a former teacher himself, pushed back at Republicans. "And really study the existing law before such grand accusations are made," he said before the Assembly Education Committee.
Teachers have a big stake in the outcome, but what is the best way to evaluate their effectiveness in the classroom is the question.
Shannon Brown, president of the San Juan Teachers Association, testified that evaluating teachers can be difficult.
"From the teacher perspective there was no quality feedback given and they wanted that," Brown said. "It depends on who your administrator is and what their prior knowledge or training or skill set is. So that bred a lot of mistrust in the system."
The fight over school reform is bitter and divisive, but both sides agree that the battle will continue well into next year.Politicians spar over education reform at the Capitol | Sacramento News - KCRA Home:

Rolling back school reform in New York City - The Washington Post

Rolling back school reform in New York City - The Washington Post:

Rolling back school reform in New York City

NEW YORK Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) wasted no time dismantling the education policies of three-term mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), and his administration claims schools have improved as a result. Well, jettisoning data-driven accountability, transparency and standards certainly makes it easier to claim success. But children measured by low standards and with inflated grades may not be learning, which undermines any chance they will have for success.

Mr. de Blasio’s approach to education recently came under intense scrutiny with the release of a $400 million plan targeting struggling schools. So low were the goals for improvement (in some cases, the benchmarks were set lower than a school’s current performance) that they were rebuked as “ridiculous” by a top state education official. In the face of that criticism, city education officials said any schools that meet their benchmarks early will have those targets strengthened and, in a shift of policy, Mr. de Blasio this week announced the closure of three failing schools.

Other areas of concern have emerged. A report issued last month by StudentsFirstNY, an advocacy group for charter schools and other school reforms, found rampant grade inflation, with high marks awarded to students unable to pass state tests. A change in promotion policy has led to charges of increased social promotion, with unprepared students passed from grade to grade.

We won’t romanticize the state of New York City schools when Mr. de Blasio took over; big problems endured. But reform by Mr. Bloomberg and his imaginative school chancellor, Joel Klein, had produced increases in graduation rates, an upward trend in test scores and the replacement of failed high schools with better-performing small schools. Particularly noteworthy was the success of charter schools that offered the kind of choice that better-off parents take for granted. Sadly, even that initiative is threatened; a recent report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank, says school choice has suffered since Mr. Bloomberg’s departure from office.

Making the situation even more worrisome is that it is being played out against a backdrop of state retrenchment. Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the state board of regents, who chastised the city for setting low standards and has been a stabilizing force, is leaving, and new board members are seen as favoring anti-reform union interests. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), stung by successful union efforts to get parents to opt out of critical testing, is expected to roll back progress on teacher evaluations based partly on student achievement. The losers in all of this are students who are trapped in failing schools and saddled with ineffective teachers. That most of them are poor and minorities doesn’t seem to matter to those who profess to be progressive.

Read more on this topic:

The Post’s View: Why is New York Mayor Bill de Blasio undermining charter schools?

Scott Pearson and John “Skip” McKoy: Getting the balance right

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Bill de Blasio’s persuasive case for universal pre-K

Rolling back school reform in New York City - The Washington Post:

How Charter School Governance in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Measures Up

How Charter School Governance in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Measures Up:

How Charter School Governance in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Measures Up

Charter schools are tuition-free, taxpayer-supported institutions that are granted the right to operate without many of the rules that govern traditional public schools. Most hold classes in buildings, but some, known as cyber or virtual charters, operate online. Questions surrounding the way charters are authorized, regulated, renewed, and shut down are a major component of the debate about public education in Pennsylvania, particularly in the School District of Philadelphia. Over half of the state’s roughly 160 brick-and-mortar charters are located in the district, and the city’s charter school population—more than 60,000, accounting for about 30 percent of its public school students—is the nation’s third-largest, behind the districts serving Los Angeles and New York City. Only four large districts—New Orleans, Detroit, the District of Columbia, and Cleveland—have higher percentages of students in charters than does Philadelphia.

To gain perspective on charter school governance in the School District of Philadelphia and the state, The Pew Charitable Trusts compared the rules under which charters operate in Pennsylvania with those in 15 other states, all of which have at least one major urban school district with a substantial number or percentage of its students in charters. The states are California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. Nationally, 43 states and the District of Columbia permit charters.

The comparison showed that although regulation varies among states, Pennsylvania’s approach is similar to what a number of other states are doing. But there are differences, too, including the low percentage of charters it has closed in recent years and the high percentage of noncertified teachers it allows charters to employ. Among the additional findings:

• In Pennsylvania, the authority to create brick-and-mortar charter schools rests with the governing body of each local district, which in Philadelphia is the School Reform Commission. Similar authorization processes are in place in five of the other 15 states studied. In two states, the state education department has sole responsibility to create charters. The other eight have multiple entities that can authorize them, including local school boards, mayors, the state, and universities.
• Oversight responsibility, which includes decisions about opening and closing charter schools, almost always rests with the authorizing body or bodies, as it does in Pennsylvania. The states’ accountability requirements for schools are similar.
• Charters in most of the states, including Pennsylvania, are granted blanket waivers from the rules governing traditional public schools. Uncertified teachers are permitted to make up as much as 25 percent of a charter’s teaching staff in Pennsylvania, a higher percentage than is allowed in most of the other states.
• In recent years, Pennsylvania has been among the states least likely to open or close charter schools. On average, it increased the number of charters in the state by 7.5 percent per year; the median for the states studied was 9.4 percent. Closings decreased the number of charters in Pennsylvania by 1.3 percent; the median was 3.4 percent. In most of the states examined, including Pennsylvania, charters were usually closed for financial mismanagement and, on occasion, suspected fraud, although poor academic performance also led to closures.
• Relative to the other states studied, Pennsylvania has a high percentage of charter students enrolled in statebased cybercharters. Across the country, seven states bar charters of any kind, and 11 others do not allow cybercharters.

Download Related Materials

• How Charter School Governance in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Measures Up (PDF)

How Charter School Governance in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Measures Up:

New Study Takes A Look At How Pa. Oversees Charter Schools Compared To Other States

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A new study looks at how Pennsylvania oversees charter schools, compared to other states.

A Pew study says Pennsylvania is similar to other states in allowing local districts to authorize charter schools. In Philadelphia, the School Reform Commission has that power. But a few things stand out, says Larry Eichel, Director of Pew’s Philadelphia Research Initiative.

“Pennsylvania allows a higher percentage of uncertified teachers to make up a charter’s staff than some other states,” said Eichel.

Up to 25 percent uncertified. And:

“In recent years, Pennsylvania has been among the states least likely to open or close charters,” said Eichel.

The report did not explore why that is. Nor did it examine the performance of charters under various oversight models.

Eichel says last school year, 28 percent of Pennsylvania’s charter school students were enrolled in cyber charters — the second-highest percentage in the nation behind Ohio.

Charter schools remain a bad investment for students and taxpayers

Charter schools remain a bad investment for students and taxpayers | StAugustine.com:

Charter schools remain a bad investment for students and taxpayers

An Associated Press study of Department of Education records published last week showed that taxpayers have funded these privately-run, but publicly-funded schools to the tune of $760 million since 2000.

Of that, $70 million has been spent on charter schools that have gone out of business — in most cases, a total loss.

What the study did not do was speculate on future spending, which has risen dramatically over the past five years. Taxpayers are now actually funding capital building projects for charter schools in addition to funding expenses ranging from rents and leases to buses, books, salaries and insurance policies.

The whole charter idea is controversial and, opponents say, illegal. One of the basic arguments is that we are, in come cases, funding private religious schools with public money — a clear example bending the core belief of the separation of church and state. Judges, as recently as last week, have disagreed and upheld the funding of charter schools.

Let’s forget for a moment the taxpayer losses from charter schools that have shut their doors, although that’s only a part of the arguments against the lack of accountability mandated for these private schools.

Other arguments against charter schools are myriad.

The strongest is that they take money directly away from the public school system which, as we’ve seen locally, is already being under-funded, especially in terms of capital improvement dollars. We just passed a tax increase to attempt to play catchup. So if our school infrastructure is lagging behind — and it is — does it make financial sense to build parallel school infrastructure or invest in existing infrastructure?

Many charter schools are for-profit rather than non-profit. A recent study in Maryland showed that 85 percent of its charter schools are for-profit and they spend an average of 50 cents on the dollar for instruction, while public schools spent 60 cents. Would you, as a taxpayer, rather put the extra money (millions annually) in corporate profits or teacher salaries?

Charter schools have appointed boards, if at all, and accountable to whom? Most public Charter schools remain a bad investment for students and taxpayers | StAugustine.com: